Robert Alan Eustace is an American computer scientist who served as Senior Vice President of Knowledge at Google.[3] Since October 24, 2014, he holds the world record for the highest-altitude free-fall jump.[2][4]

As a university student, Eustace worked part-time selling popcorn and ice cream in Fantasyland and working on the monorail at Walt Disney World.[5] However, after taking a class on computer science, he decided to switch majors and ended up completing three academic degrees in the field, including a doctorate in 1984.[5]

After graduation, Eustace worked briefly for Silicon Solutions, a startup in Silicon Valley,[5] before joining Digital, Compaq and then HP's Western Research Laboratory, where he worked 15 years on pocket computing, chip multi-processors, power and energy management, internet performance, and frequency and voltage scaling.[6] In the mid-1990s, he worked with Amitabh Srivastava on ATOM, a binary-code instrumentation system that forms the basis for a wide variety of program analysis and computer architecture analysis tools.[6][7] These tools had a profound influence on the EV5, EV6 and EV7 chip designs.

Eustace was appointed head of the laboratory in 1999, but left it three years later to join Google, then a four-year-old startup.[5] At Google, he worked as Senior Vice President of Engineering and as Senior Vice President of its Knowledge department until his retirement on March 27, 2015.[8] He was also actively involved in a number of Google's community-related activities, such as the Second Harvest Food Bank and the Anita Borg Scholarship Fund.[6]

In the course of his professional career, Eustace co-authored nine publications and appeared as co-inventor in ten patents.[6]

In 2011, Eustace decided to pursue a stratosphere jump and met with Taber MacCallum, one of the founding members of Biosphere 2, to begin preparations for the project.[2] Over the next three years, the Paragon Space Development technical team designed and redesigned many of the components of his parachute and life-support system.[1][2]

His descent to Earth lasted 4 minutes 27 seconds[10] and stretched nearly 26 miles (42 km) with peak speeds exceeding 822 miles per hour (1,323 km/h),[9] setting new world records for the highest free-fall jump and total free-fall distance 123,414 feet (37,617 m).[11] However, because Eustace's jump involved a drogue parachute, while Baumgartner's did not, their vertical speed and free-fall distance records remain in different categories.[12][13][14]

Unlike Baumgartner, Eustace, a twin-engine-jet pilot, was not widely known as a daredevil prior to his jump.[2]

Leidich, Jared The Wild Black Yonder, The Inside Story of the Secret Trip to the Edge of Earth's Atmosphere for the Highest Balloon Flight and Skydive of All Time. Stratospheric Publishing, 2016. ISBN0997691905